


Memories

by beng



Series: 30 Days of Martin Lavellan [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Denerim, First Manifestation of Magic, Gen, Mixed-race Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beng/pseuds/beng
Summary: The memory of his family making their last trip together towards the outskirts of Denerim where Clan Ralaferin are staying sticks with Martin for years.
Series: 30 Days of Martin Lavellan [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2080431





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the [30 Days OC challenge](https://luinquesse.tumblr.com/post/187518711282/30-days-oc-challenge) by luinquesse.

Martin is chasing a stray cat with his elder sister and other kids in an alley behind their home—they just want to pet it—when she gets bitten, there is a lot of wailing, and then his magic manifests for the first time, a golden glow that soothes the girl’s tears and heals the bite.

Martin is seven years old.

His parents—his mum and his stepfather Lowan—rack their brains for what to do. Martin understands little, only that he has done something dangerous, something he shouldn’t have. For weeks, the feeling in their little house is sombre and tense. The children are not allowed to play outside anymore. There is talk about Clan Ralaferin and his late father’s kin agreeing to take him in. Martin doesn’t remember his father, only Dad-Lowan. Mum is grim, and she’s secretly crying. Dad-Lowan still thinks moving to the countryside would be a better idea. Mum thinks it’s still too dangerous.

When finally Keeper Iveanis knocks on their door, Martin is overwhelmed and hides in the workshop under the wood-turning bench, trying to sniffle only very, very quietly. Everyone is acting weird, and he doesn’t understand why. It’s not just because of him having to leave.

At least the horrible weeks-long wait is over, and then Martin is out in the sun again. They don’t let him run around though; instead Dad-Lowan, a burly man with laugh lines around his eyes, picks him up and carries him on his shoulders while mum walks holding his sister’s hand.

The memory of his family making their last trip together towards the outskirts of Denerim where Clan Ralaferin are staying sticks with Martin for years. He remembers how the sun felt on his face after weeks spent cooped inside. The cobbled, lively streets of the wood-worker quarter. He remembers his little hands buried deep in his human dad’s curly dark hair—it was soft and it always smelled of wood shavings—, and the soothing sway of his shoulders. When he lowered his inquisitive fingers to brush them over his prickly, greying beard, he found Dad-Lowan’s cheeks wet, but the woodturner just gripped little Martin’s legs a bit tighter with one hand, and clutched the sack with Martin’s things to his chest with the other.

Since then, Martin has ridden horses and harts, has spent two decades travelling, living and sleeping in nothing but gently swaying aravels, has learned to control his magic, has received his vallaslin.

But never since then has he seen a middle-aged shemlen carrying on his shoulders a small elven child that has just manifested magic, and crying fat tears of loss.


End file.
